I was more on top of weed-pulling in our first garden. I had the energy of youth, the pride of a new homeowner, and it seemed urgent. Likewise, in the early years of Joey’s life, we were young enough to run ourselves ragged trying to do everything: work on every skill and learning drill, coach him through every small task, try to keep him engaged, clean up after him, visit and consult every expert, and go to every seminar and meeting. As each year passed, we accepted more freedom just to say “no.” We accepted that there would be all kinds of needs and issues all the time.

We also learned more about depending upon others. I pay friends’ kids to pull my weeds these days. In raising a person with autism, there are free services and activities out in the community, and some for which you have to pay. Either way, there are good and competent folks who can enrich the life of a person who lives with autism.

You can spend all of your time pulling weeds. You’ll have a nicer garden, a sore back, and a growing sense of futility. The job is never done.

We’re coming up on half a year since our 24 year old son with autism, a presence for all but four of our married years, moved to his group home.

Someone described empty nest couples (sorry for the mixed metaphor ahead) as two people finding that “the cushion is gone.” Two people with a relationship… what? invested in? distracted by? absorbed with? filtered through? children wake up and find this empty space between them and start trying to scoot together across it. Or refill it. Or whatever else people do with empty spaces.

Deferred desires long stuffed under the cushion become visible. Missed time with friends and extended family, skipped travels, unmade personal touches to home and yard, shrugged off study and career opportunities and piles of other hoped-for endeavors are there, but harder to pick up now that the restrictions of age, time and overworked finances have fallen into that space with them.

Old grievances come into the space. The demands of the special need were exhausting but they buffered deeper discussions and discoveries that the couple should have shared. Now these flop in with all of their emotional distortions and disputed memories and toxic colorization of today.

There’s pleasant stuff, too. A gentle pace of life was buried under the cushion and can be restored. Daydreams can be shared over coffee or cocktails. Decisions can be talked out at length. There isn’t a frayed and fragile cushion sitting there demanding urgent care. Life doesn’t have to be lived as a constant emergency response.

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/16/missing-cushion/feed/1caregivingstinks20180516_074005They helped me out of the hole.https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/10/they-helped-me-out-of-the-hole/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/10/they-helped-me-out-of-the-hole/#respondThu, 10 May 2018 17:17:04 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/10/they-helped-me-out-of-the-hole/ellielacey: Hi world, It’s me, Ellie. I know it’s been a little while since I shared my thoughts on here but I am backkkk. Quite honestly there was a reason for my MIA-ness. I have been going…]]>

A very insightful piece. She blogs more often about relationships but her insights here are VITAL to caregiver survival.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned during this season of my life, it’s that we all NEED people and that we weren’t made to be alone.”

It’s me, Ellie. I know it’s been a little while since I shared my thoughts on here but I am backkkk. Quite honestly there was a reason for my MIA-ness. I have been going through some things in my life over the past few months that were too personal and deep to share via online. Don’t worry, I wasn’t depressed or anything like that but the things that I was dealing with were too raw and personal to share online. I didn’t know how to verbalize them and I’m still not sure when, if or how those things will be shared on here. I’ll keep you posted

I really wanted to share these things that I was going through with people who asked. People who I have been doing face to face life with, not the whole wide internet world. It can be such a positive thing…

It is a change made at his request. He managed to verbalize the desire for a new bed in his old room for visits to our house.

We’ve been buying new blankets to replace frayed old familiars. But here’s where autism and the need for predictability comes in. Not only are some of these old items like old friends, they have the ability to make change (e.g. a new bed) more agreeable.

The issue at hand is an old Power Rangers blanket. It is fraying and, while not presently bleeding out fibrous filler, it will soon be in that dryer-clogging-expensive-appliance-wrecking place.

We want to throw it away. We want to make the new bed a new bed, dang it.

But this is where a person-centered approach is important. We need to make such a decision Joey’s. We need to ask Do you want the Power Ranger blanket on your bed or is it all done?

If he wants it, we honor that. If it starts to come apart, then we three have the conversation explaining how it is broken and has to go.

We don’t do stuff only to and for Joey, we do it with him.

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/04/transitional-objects-or-should-power-rangers-really-go-go/feed/0caregivingstinks20180504_094038Strong mind, weak backhttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/02/strong-mind-weak-back/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/02/strong-mind-weak-back/#respondWed, 02 May 2018 11:38:37 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/?p=6474Continue reading →]]>When advocating for our son’s placement in a group home, one of our arguments was our increasing age and the upcoming physical challenges of ’round the clock care for an adult with autism.

Now that he’s placed, our incredible wisdom is validated.

This week, Tim was diagnosed with something called “frozen shoulder.” As the Mayo Clinic reveals,

Even with Joey in a good group home, our age impinges on what we can do for him. We just bought the new bed he needs, and Melissa’s call to the mattress place went something like,

My husband can come pick it up, but he’s got a shoulder thing. Can someone there help him get the mattress on top of the van? And can you tie it down for him?

Which is to say,

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/05/02/strong-mind-weak-back/feed/0caregivingstinksAutism: Overcoming The Social Barriers by Lucy Wyndhamhttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/28/autism-overcoming-the-social-barriers-by-lucy-wyndham/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/28/autism-overcoming-the-social-barriers-by-lucy-wyndham/#respondSat, 28 Apr 2018 14:52:13 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/28/autism-overcoming-the-social-barriers-by-lucy-wyndham/Good piece from the UK on practical steps to make social settings more agreeable to people with autism.
]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/28/autism-overcoming-the-social-barriers-by-lucy-wyndham/feed/0Featured Image -- 6472caregivingstinksThe Dignity of Riskhttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/26/the-dignity-of-risk/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/26/the-dignity-of-risk/#respondThu, 26 Apr 2018 15:27:47 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/?p=6469Continue reading →]]>Tim had a chance to speak to the staff of a non-profit community support provider. Many of the attendees wore blue in support of Autism Awareness Month.

It was a chance to remind these care giving allies how much they mean to families like ours.

Tim shared a story from our book, recounting how we threw a little party to offer a personal goodbye to one of our son’s music therapists before we moved to another state. He noted that educators, medical providers, therapists and all kinds of other direct support folks don’t hear from families unless and until something is wrong. Our interactions tend to be steeped in bad news. We need to find ways to say thank you and, as the New Testament puts it, encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

As we shared in an earlier post, community support agencies have the heart and vision to provide all kinds of help to people with special needs and their families, but are hindered by lack of staff. When Tim asked his audience what things families, churches, community groups and other neighbors could do to enhance their work, responses included

Identify people suited to care giving and encourage them to consider it as a career

Help the public understand the work of service providers and why they do it

Provide meaningful interactions and opportunities in the community for the people receiving services

Express gratitude to caregivers

Engage in advocacy work on behalf of community support agencies

One of the people present spoke of care giving as possessing the dignity of risk. Caring for people with special needs means going down unfamiliar paths, trying out the untested, sometimes trusting intuition in opposition to common sense, and learning to center efforts on the person in our care instead of our own expectations of “what’s best.”

Families have this risk, dignity and all, dropped upon us when our loved one is diagnosed. We accept the risk out of love and duty.

We are blessed when folks who don’t have to accept it choose the dignity of risk as a way of life. May their tribe increase.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. (Luke 10:2)

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/26/the-dignity-of-risk/feed/0caregivingstinksABS Blue April 2018Paper Trailhttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/21/paper-trail/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/21/paper-trail/#respondSun, 22 Apr 2018 00:50:03 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/?p=6464Continue reading →]]>Melissa is reclaiming a room of the house to turn into a man cave for Tim. Well, more of a study really since Tim lost his man card ages ago.

Anyway, this is an empty nest dividend, a chance to use space that was ignored or allowed to be thrashed during the long years of care giving. To friggin’ enjoy parts of our house in non-care-giving ways.

Today we cleared out two broken down file cabinets. They will be hauled away but oh what they held.

Well, frankly, most of it was trash. Sure, important trash that will need to be shredded. But stuff no longer needed.

Years of mortgage and refi paperwork from trying to strike deals to make ends meet without upending our son’s life.

All kinds of medical insurance stuff as the pursuit of more income, better coverage or simply more time to meet care giving demands worked itself out in an array of job changes and second jobs.

And of course tons of educational and social service type stuff that life with autism generates. IEP “invitations” and outcomes that seemed like the be-all-and-end-all of life at the time. Report cards. Respite care accounting forms. Our son’s participation in a University of California search for autism causes in the environment (no, they didn’t find one). All of those pull-off-the-ends-and-lift-the-sticky Social Security Administration forms.

Not even the tip of this iceberg.

There were a few important things to retain, but by and large the paper trail of our care giving life is heading to the garage in reinforced bags to be handed over to a shredding service.

Then there were some sentimental rescues. Pictures of Joey, class photos from various schools, notes from teachers and others who helped Joey and our whole family over the years.

Those we boxed for various destinations – some for a shinier new file cabinet to come, of course – but others for a scrapbook for Joey. He delights in looking at pictures of past friends, teachers, neighbors and classmates. Will be a joy to bring a collection to grace his new home.

And you can bet that some paper will just live here with us, in wallets and purses, in drawers where we can bump into a memory in the course of daily routines, maybe in albums for us.

I mean, who else will reminisce and smile and maybe shed a sweet tear over a picture of Joey turning his back on the camera… and on Santa?

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/21/paper-trail/feed/0caregivingstinks20180421_18052420180421_18042320180421_180647.jpgNot another listhttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/16/not-another-list/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/16/not-another-list/#commentsMon, 16 Apr 2018 12:13:29 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/?p=6460Continue reading →]]>I know, I know, you try to chill with some time surfing the internet and you are bombarded with the 5 Things You Must Do and the 10 Things You Should Never Do and the 3 Things You Absolutely Must Stop Doing.

Time is the greatest gift. Many caregivers have told me that caregiving locks them into whirlwind daily routines of attending to others’ needs. Above all else, they miss time for themselves — to go to the salon or bank, read a book, clean the house or catch up on sleep. The greatest comfort you may offer is the gift of time. Offer to sit with care receivers while caregivers take a break. Pick up supplies for caregivers so they can stay home and relax. Try to make yourself available to listen as often as they need to vent.

Things you might consider small favors are solid gold to a caregiver. YOU just being around can be a gift. Even in the midst of a tornado of chores, an adult friend with whom to joke, whine, opinionate or otherwise have a peer level, non-care-giving interaction is a blessing.

Go check out the list of four suggestions. You’ll find you have a lot to give by just being you. And in caring for us caregivers, you are improving our peace, strength and focus to help those in our care.

]]>https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/16/not-another-list/feed/3caregivingstinksTony Gaines StarzFlurry of memorieshttps://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/14/flurry-of-memories/
https://caregivingstinks.com/2018/04/14/flurry-of-memories/#respondSat, 14 Apr 2018 18:40:49 +0000http://caregivingstinks.com/?p=6457Continue reading →]]>Much of our region is shut in by a massive blizzard today. The City of Sioux Falls is asking people to stay off of city streets, let alone risk country roads or the Interstates.

Now that we are empty nest, I find myself remembering the anxiety that would have accompanied this kind of day when we had our son at home. Everything would be wrong and a potential meltdown: if the weather cancelled an anticipated outing; if it prevented fulfillment of a whim for some particular food that wasn’t in the house; if any daily routines were in disarray.

Boredom would make him edgy and mounting stress could issue in a seizure. But he wouldn’t engage in activities we tried to share. He’d generally vocalize some demand that was impossible to meet and his tension would escalate.

Today he’ll be in his group home. He has his own room with a computer and movies in case he wants to be alone. There are common spaces with things to do if he wants company. And there are staff there with the residents doing what we used to do, and we are grateful.

Stressful days are not limited to snow days when it comes to autism and care giving. School vacation or “in service” days, when routine is removed, can be walks through hell.

My respect goes out to all who are shut in today, be they people with special needs or their caregivers. Whatever inconveniences and challenges most of us endure, they have an extra helping or two.